Faded Photos Yield Vivid Story Of West Winter Park

The Heritage Project Wants To Preserve The History Of A Community Some Fear Is Disappearing.

April 19, 2002|By Lydia Polgreen, Sentinel Staff Writer

WINTER PARK -- The picture's edges are worn, and the image is washed-out and dim. But that doesn't fade the memories it evokes for Annie Smith Burns.

"That was the section house," Burns said, pointing to the simple, wood-frame building in the picture's background. In the foreground, Burns' mother, Willie Smith, sits with three of her five children surrounding her.

"Five families lived in the house, and we had two rooms for my whole family," Burns said. "My father worked for the railroad, and we lived right on the tracks. The railroad tracks were our front yard."

Clutching sepia-toned photographs culled from well-worn family albums, residents of the city's historically black west side gathered at the Winter Park Community Center this week to tell the stories of a neighborhood that some fear is on the brink of extinction. As upscale businesses move into Hannibal Square, once the heart of a thriving black neighborhood, some fear gentrification will push longtime residents out.

The photographs, along with recorded interviews with residents, are part of the Heritage Project, an oral and photographic history of the west side sponsored by the Crealde School of Art.

"We want to try to preserve something before it's all gone," said Peter Schreyer, a photographer and executive director of the school.

Hoping to coax old pictures and fading memories from an aging population, Crealde has had two Heritage Project events so far and plans another for the summer.

Historians interview the people who bring pictures about the images. Photographers make copies of the old photographs, so residents won't have to give up precious family pictures.

So far, the project has collected more than 50 images and has recorded oral histories based on the photographs. Schreyer said Crealde hopes to put together an exhibit at the Winter Park Community Center before the end of the year.

"It is going to be a gift to the community," Schreyer said. "Eventually we hope to buy one of the neighborhood's old houses and put the materials on permanent display."

The photographs collected so far go as far back as the 1930s, documenting the once-bustling life of the city's west side. In one photograph from the 1940s, members of the Winter Park Social Club pose in tuxedos and evening gowns. In another, children play on dirt streets.

Other images capture how the city's black and white residents led intertwined yet separate lives.

Burns, 66, who was born and raised on the west side, showed one photograph of her aunts, Lila and Margaret, standing on the lawn of Casa Feliz, the celebrated home of Bruce Barbour, a wealthy chemical manufacturer for whom the two women worked as domestic servants.

Other images speak clearly of the segregated times. In one yellowed photograph from the 1940s, rows of black third-graders pose for a class picture with their teacher.

"We didn't have air conditioning, and you can see a lot of the windows are broken," Burns said. Her brother Leon is in the second row. "When the windows were broken, a lot of the times they didn't fix them."

The Hannibal School, the segregated school for black children, no longer exists.

Kim Mould, a historian working on the project, said losing these images and stories would be tragic. "Preservation is not only about buildings but also memories," Mould said. "So much of a neighborhood is in its people and their memories."